'Confidence trickster' undertaker sets up in Salford

A CONVICTED fraudster has opened a funeral home in Greater Manchester - leaving a trail of unpaid bills totalling thousands of pounds, the M.E.N. can reveal. Richard Sage, 47, set up shop in Salford while being investigated by police for allegations relating to undertaker services in Scotland.

A CONVICTED fraudster has opened a funeral home in Greater Manchester - leaving a trail of unpaid bills totalling thousands of pounds, the M.E.N. can reveal.

Richard Sage, 47, set up shop in Salford while being investigated by police for allegations relating to undertaker services in Scotland.

He has already been jailed twice for fraud and deception - including a seven-year sentence for tricking an NHS hospital out of around £400,000. At his trial he was branded a `practised, professional confidence trickster' by the judge. Mr Sage - who denies any wrongdoing - opened Edmund Funeral Home, in Eccles, about six months ago.

Since then he has:

Been forbidden from collecting the ashes of a woman whose cremation he arranged after he failed to pay for it

Paid for a burial plot with a bad cheque - leaving a cemetery £500 out of pocket

Racked up a £2,000 debt with a car hire company and not settled the bill. He also arranged for a £1,150 security system to be installed at the funeral home - and again paid with a cheque which bounced.

The M.E.N. has seen a letter from Trafford council sent to funeral directors warning that Mr Sage is now in Salford and is reportedly paying people for work with cheques that have bounced.

David Jennings, bereavement services manager at Altrincham crematorium, says in the letter: "He has a long history of this type of crime."

Mr Sage, originally from Woking, was banned in 1996 from being the director of a limited company for 12 years.

He has been involved with several undertaker businesses throughout Britain. He uses one company, the internet-based Direct Funeral Services, to point business to Edmund Funeral Home. Detectives in Strathclyde, Scotland, are still investigating Mr Sage for alleged fraud and bankruptcy offences relating to a business called Cowal Funeral Directors, which has now ceased trading.

Across the country, businesses Mr Sage had involvement with before he came to Salford have:

Taken almost £2,000 without permission from the credit card of a woman who had already paid £1,900 for her mother's funeral

Obtained more than £1,000 from an elderly lady for her sister's funeral before her death and then ceased trading

Ordered a headstone for a five-year-old boy's grave and never paid for it.

John Weir, from the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF), the membership of which is voluntary, said: "We have been contacted by cemeteries, crematoria, bereaved families, suppliers and a whole host of people with complaints about him. But because he is not a member of SAIF, we are powerless."

Mr Sage needs planning permission to run the premises Wellington Road, as an undertakers. Salford Council said he has not yet applied for it but has contacted planners to register his intention.